TORONTO – One of the big four mega trends is Big Data or put in other terms business intelligence. At the Splunk Live Conference today the San Francisco-based machine-generated data software vendor is advising the channel and customers to put the focus on operational intelligence.

What’s operational intelligence? According to Splunk, operational intelligence is an internal term the company uses to describe how machine data can be turned into valuable insights independent of what business sector the customer is in.

“Machine data we talk about can be used in many ways and it’s the same data but with people asking different question about the data shown in a common workflow,” said Splunk senior vice president of IT markets Rick Fitz.

One of the use cases Splunk unveiled was from IT department at Coca-Cola who is using Splunk to make better decisions on new drink flavours.

Coca-Cola uses Splunk Enterprise as its data engine for analyzing data based around trending flavour mixes from its Freestyle machines that you see at movie theatres. Coca-Cola correlate that data with geographical information to better stock these machines. Splunk Enterprise uses the Amazon Web Services platform to collect, index and analyzes machine-generated data even from mobile devices. These Coca-Cola Freestyle machines are equipped with sensors that can capture user data and show decision makers what flavours are being mixed and it has the potential for the company to create a new drink based on popular flavour mixes.

Splunk Canada solutions consultant Raif Schrippa said that the 404 error page is a common service interruption and most people don’t know what it means. Splunk Enterprise can enrich that information and provide log status in a readable fashion in dashboards for decision makers on service unavailability.

“We are trying to remedy a problem, but in Splunk I can be more proactive and alert people in real time. This can change the game by integrating with a company’s own ticketing system,” he said.

IT distributor Arrow Electronics has announced an agreement to distribute StorMagic software-defined storage solutions in both the US and Canada. Under the agreement, the Centennial, Colorado-based distributor would bring to market SvSAN, virtual storage software aimed

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Splunk’s channel opportunity centres around its Partner Plus program that aims to protect solution providers who have invested in Splunk solutions. Arrow Canada is Splunk’s exclusive distributor in Canada. Omer Gagnier, the enterprise software business development manager at Arrow told CDN that Splunk is building its channel network through front end margins.

“Splunk is not signing up everyone and that’s great for partners. The Splunk partner program provides protection for solution providers and it’s a reliable environment. If you can get specific with Splunk then it becomes terrific for partners,” Gagnier said.

He added that for solution providers who are able to develop use cases or proof of concepts around the Splunk solutions have a big opportunity with operational intelligence. “Splunk has a land and expand type of channel philosophy and those who can do proof of concepts and use cases are able to own the customer and have them invest more in Splunk.”

The Splunk Partner Plus program pays front end margins for partner who sign up customers similar to a deal registration program. Now this partner gets a special price opportunity for this customer, while other solution providers get the technology off list pricing. If the solution provider assigns a system engineer to the opportunity they get a margin bonus.

Splunk Canada has also hired EMC Canada executive Stephanie O’Neil as its new Channel Chief in Canada.

Fitz provided a call to action for channel partners and customers to sign up and get a free trial that includes Enterprise Security and IT Service Intelligence.

Other products from Splunk are: Splunk Cloud, Splunk Light, Splunk Hunk. The company also offers a premium level of solutions with Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk IT Service Intelligence and Splunk User Behavior Analytics.